Archive, Readings
Desert Fathers 42
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Isaac the Theban went to a monastery. There he saw a brother who had fallen. And he judged him. When he went back to the desert, an angel of the Lord came and took up position before the door of his cell, saying: ‘I will not let you enter.’ [Abba Isaac] besought him and said: ‘What is this about?’ The angel answered him and said: ‘God has sent me to you to say: “Ask him: Where do you command that I should cast the fallen brother?” At once Abba Isaac prostrated himself, saying: ‘I have sinned! Forgive me!’ The angel said: ‘Get up. God has forgiven you. But from now on take good care not to judge anyone before God has judged him’.
Before us is an example of cursory judgement. Such are easily made. We see someone in church, at a party, crossing the road; we hear somebody else whisper, ‘There goes such-and-such. Do you know what he did?’
Lapping up the gossip, we are swift to condemn. Condemnation brings a moment’s satisfaction. Inwardly we may make a sigh of relief. To have someone to look down on gives us a satisfying sense of having reached a certain height. We might even spiritualise our reaction and rehearse a formula like that of the man who, long ago, went up to the temple to pray, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector’, quite unaware of how grotesque we have become.
A penchant for judging in this way may remain with us even when we have made some progress in the spiritual life, when our eyes are opened to behold God’s angels. Abba Isaac ascertained this on his way back from a visit paid to an unnamed monastic community. Walking happily home, looking forward to the peace and quiet of his cell, his sanctuary, he might, for all we know, have quite forgotten about the fallen brother. Nothing suggests that he was obsessed with him, or even that he had made some sort of public pronouncement. He had simply seen a man about whom he had heard certain things, in whom a certain degradation was perceptible, or about whom he had suspicions, and had judged him in his heart, thinking: ‘Dear God, another one of those!’ or ‘Why do these weaklings need to bring the side down?’
Then he found his sanctuary closed to him, guarded by an angel like the cherub posted by God east of Eden after Adam’s fall, with a flaming sword turning every way. We have had occasion to notice it already: the angels who appear to the Desert Fathers are straight-talking creatures whose utterance is salted. By putting to Issac a sardonic question, the angel makes the elder see the extent of his presumption. Isaac realises that he had, by judging his brother, usurped a divine prerogative, yielding to Luciferian pride. I am impressed by the indignation God conveys through his emissary. The message is clear: ‘Who do you think you are?’
To Isaac’s credit, he repents forthwith, unconditionally. Jumping off his high horse, he throws himself on the ground and makes an exemplary confession, that is, confession that admits, ‘I have sinned’, without blaming the weather or a headache or distractions or whatever. Isaac is basically humble and kind. His harshness had been a blip, a concession made perhaps unawares to the Old Adam set on blocking the birth in us of the New.
The angel is pleased. When he next speaks, it is with a different tone of voice. ‘The Lord’, we read in a Psalm is ‘merciful and gracious’, ‘he will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger for ever’. This episode bears the Scriptural affirmation out. The angel takes leave by addressing to Isaac a word of exhortation: ‘Do not forget this salutary humiliation’. All our falls, although painful and perhaps hideous in themselves, carry potential to become sources of grace in as much as we learn from them and recommit ourselves to the path of conversion.
The way we look at others can be a precious source of self-knowledge when we learn to attend to it well. If I incline to judge certain people, or categories of people, harshly, it is very possibly because, at some subliminal level, I find myself standing accused: my prompt judgment may well be an act of self-defence by means of attack. It would be well if instead I saw it as an invitation to be healed, forgiven, or reconciled. Dorotheus of Gaza, that wonderful man, tells a story that may help us reflect on our habits and patterns of response to people we encounter:
A fellow happens to be standing at a street-corner at night. I do not say he is a monk; he could be anybody living in the town. Three men pass by. One of them thinks: ‘That man is waiting to go off to do something lecherous!’ The second one thinks: ‘He is a robber!’ The third one thinks: ‘Ah, this man has clearly just called out to his friend from the next house and is waiting for him to come down so that together they may go somewhere and pray!’ Do you see: all three have seen the same man standing in the same place, yet their thoughts about him differ widely.
Dorotheus’s point is that the three observers do not in fact engage with the nocturnal watcher: they project onto him what is in their heart, for ill as well as for good. We shall benefit from examining closely the way in which we evaluate others. Instead of judging them falsely, we may be helped to judge ourselves in truth.
